The various unions, which represent about one-third of Commission staff, are protesting at the institution’s failure to consult them in the drafting of a 24-point plan to decentralise and simplify existing procedures, and claim they are being presented with a fait accompli.

“The Commission wants to adopt the guidelines and then consult us afterwards. That is against an agreement which dates from 1973,” said one staff representative. “You should compare that with the Competition Commissioner Karel van Miert’s statements that it was unacceptable for Renault to close its Vilvoorde factory in Belgium without consulting its employees first.”Supporters of the moves to wield a new decentralising broom in the highly centralised and hierarchical institution retort that it is entirely appropriate that Commission President Jacques Santer and his colleagues should first decide on the principle of modernisation before discussing its details with staff representatives.

Under the Modernisation of Administration and Personnel (MAP) 2000 strategy drafted by Personnel Commissioner Erkki Liikanen, a whole range of staffing and day-to-day administrative responsibilities would be transferred to individual departments.

“Some things we do now do not make sense. Why should the Directorate-General for personnel still decide who has parking spaces in the 60 or so Commission buildings around Brussels? That function should be decentralised,” said one official.

The plan aims to introduce fundamental changes in Commission thinking and practice. It would enable each directorate-general to recruit its own temporary staff (although competitions for permanent fonctionnaires would remain centrally organised), to reallocate officials as it saw fit and tohandle a large part of its own expenditurewithout requiring the permission of the Directorate-General for personnel (DGIX).

The unions will express their concerns to Liikanen at a meeting next Monday (5 May).

They fear the plan to overhaul a structure largely modelled on the French civil service of the 1960s could lead to staff being treated differently in different departments.

The changes, which would begin to be introduced from next January, are designed to lighten the bureaucratic load and streamline decision-making. They are also intended to deflect outside criticism of Commission inefficiency at a time when national governments are overhauling their own civil services.

“If we do not modernise the way we work, then someone else will do it for us. The status quo is not an option. Either we change, or the Council of Ministers will try to do it for us,” explained one official.

The present Commission is aiming to have the reforms in place and operating by the time it retires from office at the end of 1999.

“The irony of all this is that DGIX was widely criticised in the past for being excessively bureaucratic. Now the same critics are rushing to its defence,” said one observer.